: General

The next steps in a Professional Training Year

It’s been a little while since my last blog post and since then there has been a lot of exciting things happening! The scientific paper I have been working on that describes a new species of marine shovelhead worm (Magelonidae) with my training year supervisor Katie Mortimer-Jones and American colleague James Blake is finished and has been submitted for publication in a scientific journal. The opportunity to become a published author is not something I expected coming into this placement and I cannot believe how lucky I am to soon have a published paper while I am still an undergraduate.

There are thousands of scientific journals out there, all specialising in different areas. Ours will be going in the capstone edition of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a journal which covers systematics in biological sciences, so perfect for our paper. Every journal has its own specifications to abide by in order to be published in them. These rules cover everything from the way you cite and reference other papers, how headings and subheadings are set out, the font style and size, and how large images should be. A significant part of writing a paper that many people might not consider is ensuring you follow the specifications of the journal. It’s very easy to forget or just write in the style you always have!

Once you have checked and doubled checked your paper and have submitted  to the journal you wish to be published in, the process of peer reviewing begins. This is where your paper is given to other scientists, typically 2 or 3, that are specialists in the field. These peer-reviewers read through your paper and determine if what you have written has good, meaningful science in it and is notable enough to be published. They also act as extra proof-readers, finding mistakes you may have missed and suggesting altered phrasing to make things easier to understand.

I must admit it is a little nerve wracking to know that peer reviewers have the option to reject all your hard work if they don’t think it is good enough. However, the two reviewers have been nothing but kind and exceptionally helpful. They have both accepted our paper for publication. Having fresh sets of eyes look at your work is always better at finding mistakes than just reading it over and over again, especially if those eyes are specialists in the field that you are writing in.

As you would expect, the process of peer-reviewing takes some time. So, while we have been waiting for the reviews to come back, I have already made great progress on starting a second scientific paper based around marine shovelhead worms with my supervisor. While the story of the paper isn’t far along enough yet to talk about here, I can talk about the fantastic opportunity I had to visit the Natural History Museum, London!

We are currently investigating a potentially new European species of shovelhead worm which is similar to a UK species described by an Amgueddfa Cymru scientist and German colleagues. Most of the type specimens of the latter species are held at the Natural History Museum in London. Type material is scientifically priceless, they are the individual specimens from which a new species is first described and given a scientific name. Therefore, they are the first port of call, if we want to determine if our specimens are a new species or not.

The volume of material that the London Natural History Museum possesses of the species we are interested in is very large and we had no idea what we wanted to loan from them. So, in order to make sure we requested the most useful specimens for our paper, we travelled to London to look through all of the specimens there. We were kindly showed around the facilities by one of the museum’s curators and allowed to make use of one of the labs in order to view all of the specimens. The trip was certainly worth it. We took a lot of notes and found out some very interesting things, but most importantly we had a clear idea of the specific specimens that we wanted to borrow to take photos of and analyse closer back in Cardiff. 

Overall, I can say with confidence that the long drive was certainly more than worth it! I’m very excited to continue with this new paper and even more excited to soon be able to share the results of our first completed and published paper, watch this space…

Thank you once again to both National Museum Cardiff and Natural History Museum, London for making this trip possible.

As part of our Swansea PRIDE Celebrations this year, we'll be delving into the fascinating history of the novelist and successful industrialist, Amy Dillwyn, and presenting a performance piece about her life on 16th July. Here's Prof. Kirsti Bohata of Swansea University to tell us more about her. To find out more about this and all our Swansea PRIDE events, visit museum.wales

Amy Dillwyn was a pioneer. That was, in fact, her nickname amongst friends: ‘The Pioneer’. A writer, feminist campaigner and successful industrialist (a very rare thing for a woman in the 1890s) she made the most of her public platform to advocate for women’s rights.  Through her writing and her public persona she showed women could be resilient, adventurous and clever.  She rejected feminine norms, eschewing any interest in the restrictive frills of women’s fashion (except for casting an appreciative eye over the female form). Instead she cultivated a genderqueer identity (in her diaries she once wondered if she might be ‘half a man’) and her Trilby hat, thick boots, practical skirt and her ‘man’s cigar’ became iconic symbols of her claim to autonomy.

Portrait of Amy Dillwyn. Image courtesy of the Morris family.

Though she described herself as a ‘man of business’, and held prominent public roles including Chairman of the Hospital Board, she found her entrance to centres of economic power (like the Swansea Harbour Trust) barred by those who objected to her gender and, one suspects, those who had been on the receiving end of her plain-speaking.  She did not suffer fools. Calling out hypocrisy, inefficiency and incompetence where she found it amongst the all-male committees on which she served won her respect in some quarters but inevitably made enemies in others. She was ousted from the Hospital Board just as she had raised the money for a new convalescent hospital, a debacle  given blow by blow coverage over several issues in the press[i].

As a feminist campaigner, she wasn’t only interested in gaining the vote for herself – though she gave generously to the militant Women’s Freedom League and became president of Swansea’s branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) – she spoke up for fair pay and conditions for working-class women.  In March 1911 she shared a platform with trade unionists Mary MacArthur (1880-1921) and Margaret Bondfield (1873-1953), who later became a Labour MP, in protest against ‘sweated labour’. To an audience of striking dressmakers and the general public, Dillwyn argued that ‘Employers have no right to ... grind [poor people] down to take unfair wages or to make them accept unfair conditions of labour’ and called on Swansea to boycott the department store, Ben Evans. The campaign (which exposed illegal as well as unethical practices) was discussed in the House of Commons.

Trailblazer though she was as an industrialist and an iconoclastic woman who refused to have her behaviour (or dress) dictated by Victorian convention, Dillwyn’s most enduring legacy is her fiction and its importance to lesbian literary history.  Vigorous, feminist and bearing frequent touches of her dry humour, Dillwyn’s novels satirise the hypocrisy of her own class and she writes about social injustice from the perspective of the labouring classes.  Her abiding theme, however, is same-sex love and desire.  Sometimes this is overt: in A Burglary (1883) and Jill (1884) a young woman develops a ‘strange fascination’ and attraction to a woman just a little bit older (and richer).  Sometimes her plots are more coded, often involving disguise or cross-dressing: in The Rebecca Rioter she has a working-class man (based partly on Dillwyn herself[ii]) fall in love with an upper-class woman (while also fancying another man!) which suggests all sorts of queer, trans and bi-sexual readings.[iii] 

Olive Talbot with her father C. R. M Talbot of Margam Castle. From NMGW collection

The recurring subject or women loving women, and her interest in unrequited love between all sorts of people, can be traced to Dillwyn’s own life and love.  Aged 15, Amy Dillwyn fell in love with the 17-year old Olive Talbot (1843-1894), daughter of local millionaire, C. R. M Talbot of Margam Castle.  Amy and Olive were close friends, exchanged gifts, and stayed together in various houses and resorts. Though Amy laments that her ‘romantic… passionate… foolish’ love for Olive was met only with ‘ordinary’ affection, by 1872 Dillwyn referred to Olive in her diaries as ‘my wife’.  Olive remained the centre of Amy’s emotional and erotic world for at least the next 15 years (as detailed in her unique diaries which unfortunately stop in 1875 when Dillwyn underwent an operation) and probably much longer if the evidence of her novels (published during the 1880s) is taken into account. 

Though we don’t know exactly how their relationship progressed or ended – Olive spent the last years of her short life in London while Dillwyn was a semi-invalid in Swansea – the legacy of Dillwyn’s love and creative exploration of same-sex desire makes a remarkable contribution to queer Victorian literature. Her novels,[iv] along with her unusually frank diaries (held at Swansea University and currently being edited for publication), offer a compelling insight into queer life in nineteenth-century Wales. 

 

For more on Amy Dillwyn visit the Dictionary of Welsh Biography: https://biography.wales/article/s12-DILL-AMY-1845

Photographs of Olive Talbot are included in a collection of photographs by John Dillwyn Llewelyn, that are part of the National Museum of Wales' collection. Mark Etheridge, NMGW Curator: Industry and Transport provides an introduction to the collection here: John Dillwyn Llewelyn — Welsh Pioneer Photographer | National Museum Wales

You may access this and other photographic collections in our care here: Photographic Collections | National Museum Wales

 

Queer lives have always been part of history! For the last day of Pride Month 2021, Victoria Vening-Richards who is one of our Amgueddfa Cymru Producers has written an investigation of queer lives in ancient Rome. With thanks to Mark Lewis at the National Roman Legion Museum in Carleon for sharing his knowledge.

 

Queer Romans

Homosexuality within the Roman world is a much debated topic. Over the years scholars have come to varying conclusions; some suggest same-sex relations were freely practiced in the Roman world, others argue they were both legally and socially condemned. However, neither argument has been able to reach a definitive conclusion. This blog will discuss the use of the label homosexual, the social attitude towards same-sex relationships, and same-sex relationships within a military context.

1. The use of the label 'homosexual'

Recent studies on Roman society have argued that the term 'homosexual', meaning someone who has a sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender, did not exist linguistically, within the Latin language, and socially, within Roman society. This is because male Roman citizens are assumed to have defined their identity based on the extent of their masculinity rather than their sexuality. Therefore, there was no need to connect gender with sexuality and define that relationship. Similarly, there does not appear to be a term to define heterosexual and bisexual orientation within the Latin language.

2. Social attitude

While our society's attitude has shifted and continues to develop to celebrate and support the LGBTQ+ community, shifts also seem to have taken place in Roman history in terms of changes in social attitude towards relationships between freeborn male citizens. Specifically with a shift in attitude from the Republic (c.509-27 BC), when the Roman Empire was under magisterial rule, to the Principate (c.1-300 AD), when the empire was under imperial rule with an emperor as its leader.

The traditional scholarly narrative states that same-sex relationships between freeborn Roman male citizens were punishable and condemned throughout Roman history based on literary sources such as Polybius 6.37.9 which express no alternative attitude. However, recent studies suggest that there was a change between the Republic and the Principate whereby same-sex relationships were no longer legally or socially punished based on the evidence that the Latin term stuprum, meaning an illicit sexual relationship with an unmarried freeborn women or freeborn man, and the law lex scantinia which is assumed to have defined the punishment for relationships between adult men, less frequently occur in imperial literature. These omissions suggest there was a shift in attitude, at least in the elite strata in which the literary authors were situated, that involved more tolerance for same-sex relations or less concern for a citizen's private sexual orientation.

However, it is important to consider that the idea of a shift in attitude is only theoretical due to a lack of evidence. The perceived shift may instead be a consequence of later textual editing or author bias which resulted in the omission of references to same-sex relationships within Roman society.

3. A military context

Our understanding of Roman same-sex relationships within a military context originates from ancient literary sources. Similarly, to the previous section it is important to consider that these textual sources had their own agendas and were subject to manipulation during and after their creation; therefore, their evidence cannot be wholly relied upon. However, analysis of accounts from authors, such as Valerius Maximus and Suetonius, suggest that the emphasis of Roman military attitude was focused on the public consequence of a gay relationship rather than concern for the genders involved in the relationship.

The sources seem to state that same-sex relationships between freeborn Roman male soldiers, similarly to the rest of Roman society, were condemned. However, the condemnation was not focused on the genders in the sexual encounter, but rather the consequence of the relationship on the legion's effectiveness, as it was believed that a sexual relationship between two male soldiers increased their effeminacy, reduced their masculinity, compromised the unit's public image, and therefore made the legion weak against the enemy. This attitude is assumed to have been commonplace in the Republic however it is not clear whether it continued in the Principate. This emphasis on a soldier’s masculinity is evident in the gladius, a sword carried solely by Roman soldiers which was chosen in Roman iconography to be a phallic symbol used to emphasise the brutality and subsequent masculinity of sexual acts associated with the military and gladiators.

As has been previously discussed there seems to have been a shift in attitude and greater tolerance for gay relationships in the Principate and this seems to have carried into military opinion based on the lack of reference to punishment within a military context. It could be argued that this may have been due to a change in attitude, however it also may have been a result of a change in the amount of masculine honour which was attributed to a soldier in the Principate army. In contrast to the Republic, male soldiers were attributed less masculine honour; this creates the question whether there was less condemnation of same-sex relationships because male soldiers were perceived to have less masculinity and therefore, they could not compromise the image and effectiveness of their legion rather than because there was a societal change for the better?

In terms of the Roman legion based at Caerleon an assumption can be made that the same attitude towards same-sex relationships was held as the rest of the Roman army in the Principate period; however, it can only be theorised as no direct physical evidence exists.

Overall, it is difficult to state the circumstances of same-sex relationships within the Roman world due to a lack of clear and reliable evidence, but it is wrong to assume based on the lack of clarity that same-sex relationships between freeborn male citizens did not exist. The openness and spectrum of Roman relationships which is visible in the clasped hand iconography which could represent either an engagement for marriage or a formal agreement between friends, indicates that Roman relationships were more complex than a sole heterosexual orientation.

See an example of a clasped hand intaglio celebrating Roman relationships in our collections: Roman intaglio (Capricorn and clasped hands) - Collections Online | National Museum Wales

Therefore, it is highly probable that relationships between freeborn Roman male citizens did take place even though there is a lack of physical evidence to definitively prove it. Additionally, although there is evidence for gay relationships at the foremost of elite Roman society, such as between the Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous. It is not possible to definitively state the same for the population in the lower strata of Roman society due to the lack of physical evidence; nevertheless, as has been previously stated and discussed in this blog the existence of same-sex relationships between freeborn Roman male citizens in these sectors is highly probable.

 

Interesting reading:

1. Bédoyère, G. 2015. The Real lives of Roman Britain. Yale University Press: Yale.

2. Williams, C. 2010. Roman Homosexuality. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

3. Hubbard, T. 2014. A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities. John Wiley & Sons Ltd: Chichester.

4. Phang, S. 2001. The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 BC - AD 235), Law and Family in the Imperial Army. Brill: Boston.

5. Cantarella, E. 2002. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. New Haven; London.

 

Youthled projects across the museum are part of the Hands on Heritage initiative, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund's Kick the Dust Grant. Thanks to The Fund and all our National Lottery Players - keeping our fingers crossed for you! Find out more about our youth work on our website: Young people | National Museum Wales and follow us on Instagram: Bloedd AC (@bloedd_ac) • Instagram photos and videos

Today, Wales is a modern, ethnically diverse, multicultural nation, and many of our family, friends and fellow Welsh men and women are scattered across the globe. We’ve been living through unprecedented times and our world is changing. So as St David’s Day approaches, we want to explore how Welsh identity might be changing too.

We miss welcoming you to our Wales Is gallery at St Fagans National Museum of History where we explore Welsh identity and ask you to share your thoughts on what it is to be Welsh. So, we’d really like to hear from you. Please give us ONE WORD – just ONE WORD to describe Wales or Welshness right now. It could be a thing, an emotion, a colour, whatever it is for you at this time. We want to understand whether things like daffodils or cawl or concepts such as ‘hiraeth’ or ‘cwtch’ still represent us, or are there other things and feelings that are emerging as icons or as associations with contemporary Wales.

One Word For Wales

We’re interested in hearing from all and anyone who lives in Wales, or identifies as Welsh – of whatever ethnic or cultural background, regardless of where you live in the world right now.

We’ll collect all your words together and make something beautiful with them to share with you just before St David’s Day.

Please feel free to Tweet your word or create an Instagram to share it, but please, please remember to add the #wordforwales hashtag to your post so that we can find it and include it in our trawl of responses. Alternatively, please email us your word to:

onewordforwales@museumwales.ac.uk

.

And please remember to share this with friends and family across Wales and across the world.

To celebrate LGBT History Month this year I asked Vish to write a blog post about Glitter Cymru and why they founded it. Throughout 2019 I worked with members of Glitter Cymru to collect their banner, along with other objects and oral histories from its members. These all now form part of the LGBTQ+ collection at St Fagans National Museum of History.

In this blog post we have also included images from the collection, along with a video made by Vish to introduce Glitter Cymru’s Virtual Pride held in August 2020. This video has been donated to St Fagans and is preserved in the audio-visual archive.

Mark Etheridge
Curator: LGBTQ+ history
St Fagans National Museum of History

My name is Vish. I identify as Indian, Welsh and queer and I’m the founder and chair of Glitter Cymru. Glitter Cymru was set up in July 2016 as a meet-up and support group for ethnic minority people who are LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans) based in South Wales. Prior to March 2020, we used to meet on a monthly basis face to face, but due to COVID, we moved our meet-ups to a weekly basis on Zoom. We adapted to this challenging / isolating time and found great comfort in each other’s company.

Glitter Cymru came about after hearing the frustrations of my ethnic minority LGBT+ peers, as well as my own frustrations, of not feeling welcomed, understood or represented by the wider LGBT+ community and in society in general. So Glitter was born to be the possible antidote to the issue of invisibility that we continue to feel, particularly in smaller cities like Cardiff and Newport. We come together at our meet-ups to shine, sparkle and feel visible – hence our group’s name is wonderfully apt.

The truth is many of our group attendees and myself included, have experienced a great deal of exclusion and othering. For example, be it racism from the predominately white wider LGBT+ community to homophopia, biphopia and transphopia from people of our own ethnicities.

Don’t just take my word for it, recent research from Stonewall, a leading LGBT+ equality charity, found 51% of ethnic minority LGBT+ people had faced discrimination or poor treatment from the wider LGBT+ community. This issue was found to be greater for Black LGBT+ people where the figure rises to 61%.

Upsettingly, this stat highlights that many ethnic minority LGBT+ people feel they can’t be their authentic selves in British society. In a society where our identities are ignored and debated, we need spaces like Glitter Cymru to feel validated and in turn gain empowerment to face the wider world that can be bigoted.

Apart from our meet-ups, Glitter Cymru aims to raise awareness of ethnic minority LGBT+ identities and issues through campaigns and events. We’d put together a milestone event on 10 August 2019, Wales’ first BAME (Black Asian & Minority Ethnic) Pride in Cardiff where we celebrated our community.

We’ve donated our banner from this event and which we also marched with at Pride Cymru’s parade (on 24 August 2019) to St Fagans National Museum of History.  We’re deeply honoured that our handmade banner will be preserved at the museum and that it will continue to represent a moment in time where ethnic minority LGBT+ people in Wales came forward to be celebrated and acknowledged or in other words shine and sparkle as Glitter is supposed to.

© Glitter Cymru / Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales